The Hackenblog

Diptych 5

Posted on January 25, 2012 by Ginger Mayerson

Diptych 5
12″w x 9″h

Posted in diptychs | Leave a comment

Hooray for Mayors for the Freedom to Marry

Posted on January 25, 2012 by Ginger Mayerson

Mayors for the Freedom to Marry (via)

Is your mayor on this list? Mine is! Oh, Antonio! You’re so wonderful…sometimes.

Posted in impressed, politics | Leave a comment

“Dear Atlas,”

Posted on January 24, 2012 by Ginger Mayerson

“Fucking SHRUG already.

“The suspense is killing us.

“We, the Ninety Nine Percent of all American citizens, who are now in OPEN REVOLT against what is no longer a democratic government answerable to the People, have been waiting for the so-called Productive Citizens, alleged Producers, much ballyhooed Wealth Creators and all around Engines of America to keep their word to pull up stakes and abandon ship like some captain off a luxury liner that he just ran ashore onto some oil-stained beach.

“Isn’t that the dream of Ayn Rand, The Martin Luther King of Selfishness? That those Americans who have triumphed, who have stradled Industry like Collosus, will find the lower classes no longer in awe of them, and will evacuate the world to live lives of splendor in some mountain fortress, or more likely some fucking Caribbean island within a jet ski’s ride of the Caymans?

“Book your tickets.”
Dear Atlas,, by Jason Youngbluth, January 22, 2012

My hero. Oh, please click the link. He did a marvelous illo for this, too. Heh heh heh.

Posted in economics, impressed, politics | Leave a comment

RENATIONALIZE THE POST OFFICE NOW!

Posted on January 22, 2012 by Ginger Mayerson

Did you know postal rates go up again on 1/22? No? Neither did I until last Friday (grrrrr).

Renationalize the Post Office! No raises or bonuses for upper management until postal prices are halved! Bring back Sea Mail!

Seriously, the Post Office (with a lot of help from our stupid Congress) is putting itself out of business, destroying American small magazines, online sales, mail art, and really pissing me off. Enough already. If Congress is going to impose crazy-ass rules, then the our government should be responsible for the whole US postal thing. Like it was before Nixon privatized it.

Renationalize the Post Office! Renationalize the Post Office! Renationalize the Post Office! Renationalize the Post Office! Renationalize the Post Office! Renationalize the Post Office! etc. Gah!

Posted in annoyed | Leave a comment

The man called Dotcom (I couldn’t possibly make this up)

Posted on January 21, 2012 by Ginger Mayerson

“Although the company is based in Hong Kong and Dotcom lives in New Zealand, some of the alleged pirated content was hosted on leased servers in Virginia, and that was enough for U.S. prosecutors to act.”

~snip~

“The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which defends free speech and digital rights online, said in a statement that the arrests set ‘a terrifying precedent. If the United States can seize a Dutch citizen in New Zealand over a copyright claim, what is next?’”
NZ police raid file-sharing site founder’s mansion, by Matthew Barakat and Nick Perry, AP, January 20, 2012

The take away from this for me is if you’re in the file transfer business, keep your servers off US territories. Wow, this could be some kind of economic boom for the Third World.

And the hackers go wild. Although, hacker dears, perhaps you should steer clear of the Dept of Justice and other US government websites. The DOJ is working for Hollywood and Mickey Mouse these days, so it’s their masters you should punish. That being the case, feel free to kick the entertainment industry’s cyber ass as much as you want. I can’t think of a group more worthy of an extended ass kicking.

Posted in politics | Leave a comment

Savages

Posted on January 20, 2012 by Ginger Mayerson

“SOMETHING historic happened at the New York Philharmonic on the evening of Jan. 10, about an hour into Mahler’s Ninth Symphony. During the introspective, achingly beautiful fourth movement, an audience member’s cellphone loudly rang. And rang. And rang again. It was the kind of marimba riff we’ve all heard at some point on the street from a stranger’s phone.

“From my seat in Row L of the orchestra section, I could see from their body language the horrified discomfort of my fellow audience members. We all wondered whether and how the maestro Alan Gilbert would react. I noticed that some of the violinists were looking down to the seats in the front rows, trying to find the source of the noise and, by their glares, silence it.

“I closed my eyes, hoping the sounds of the orchestra would prevail over the obnoxious ringing. Suddenly, in my reverie, there was silence. The orchestra had stopped playing; Mr. Gilbert had halted the performance. He turned from his podium to the offender, who was seated in the front row, and said something to this effect:

“‘Are you going to turn it off? Will you do that?’

“There was some ‘discussion’ between the conductor and the cellphone owner — was the offender pleading his case? — but the dialogue went unheard.

“From the rear orchestra-level and the upper-tier seats of Avery Fisher Hall, shouts of outrage rained down on the hapless cellphone owner like discordant notes. Some people stood and demanded that he leave the hall. The audience was so enraged that I could have pictured them hauling him from his seat on to the stage, tying him to a stake, setting him alight and stoking the fires with the busted-up wood of cellos and violas — maybe even wheeling in one of the orchestra’s shiny Steinways for added pyrotechnics.”
Ringing Finally Ended, but There’s No Button to Stop Shame, NY Times, January 13, 2012

I would have died of shame if that had been my cell phone.

Posted in impressed | Leave a comment

Diptych 4

Posted on January 18, 2012 by Ginger Mayerson

Diptych 4
12″w x 9″h

Posted in diptychs | Leave a comment

This applies to SOPA and PIPA, too

Posted on January 15, 2012 by Ginger Mayerson

Contact your reps to just say no to SOPA and PIPA.

And here’s why and more why you’ll be glad you did!

Oh, and here’s another visual reminder about how bad SOPA and PIPA are (click on image for larger image and more images):

Posted in politics | Leave a comment

I hate Reagan, episode 69,468 squared

Posted on January 14, 2012 by Ginger Mayerson

If this chart doesn’t make you see red, there’s something wrong with you:

“The following chart tells the story. It shows inflation-adjusted GDP per capita and median family income from 1947 (the earliest year for which the income data are available) to 2007. To facilitate comparison of the over-time trends, each is indexed to its 1973 level. Since the mid-to-late 1970s, growth of income at the median has been slow — very slow — relative to growth of the economy. The current decade, with no improvement at all in median income, is especially striking.”

Slow Income Growth for Middle America, Consider the Evidence, September 3, 2008 (I wish I’d seen this sooner)

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. America making more while the general population are making less? It is truly time to Occupy America because the current management really sucks. Yes, Wall Street, Banking, Insurance Industry, Reagan Administration, Social and Neo Conservatives, I’m looking at all of you. It’s time for the Looting of America to end.

Oh, and yay, it’s an election year, so plus ça change… I think I’ll send the Occupy-iers some swim googles. It won’t stop the pepper spraying, but it will protect their eyes a little.

(via the divine Dr. K)

Posted in annoyed, economics, politics | Leave a comment

Diptych 3

Posted on January 11, 2012 by Ginger Mayerson

Diptych 3
12″w x 9″h

Posted in diptychs | Leave a comment

Diptych 2

Posted on January 4, 2012 by Ginger Mayerson

Diptych 2
12″w x 9″h

Posted in diptychs | Leave a comment

Happy New Year 2012!

Posted on January 1, 2012 by Ginger Mayerson

Yes! Peter Tork and I wish you a very happy new year and all the best in 2012 and always.

Posted in Various | Leave a comment

SOPA dope is bad news for everything anyone cares about

Posted on December 31, 2011 by Ginger Mayerson

“I’m a world-class nerd. But that doesn’t mean I understand the nuts and bolts of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), an internet censorship bill on which the House Judiciary Commitee held hearings today.”
The Stop Online Piracy Act and You: A Primer, Gizmoto, December 15, 2011

And the heavy hitters supporting this disaster:

SOPA Supporters, Scribd, no idea what the date is, but Gizmodo, with contact links to these companies, linked to it on December 21, 2011.

Actually, I think contacting your Congresspeople is probably a better idea because the American Federation of Musicians, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, Americans for Tax Reform, CBS, Comcast/NBCUniversal, Concerned Women for America, Coty, Inc., Disney Publishing Worldwide, Inc., Estée Lauder Companies, Go Daddy, HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide, Marvel Entertainment, Minor League Baseball, Motion Picture Association of America, Revlon, Scholastic, Inc., Sony/ATV Music Publishing, Sony Music Entertainment, Time Warner, and all the many, far too MANY OTHERS ON THAT LIST do not care what you think.

Also, where the hell are Google and their six story building full of lawyers (h/t Laurel S) when you need them? Or all the other companies that make a living on the internet as we now know it? Like Facebook, Yahoo, and all the others?

Posted in horrfied, politics | 1 Comment

Cool things in Los Angeles

Posted on December 31, 2011 by Ginger Mayerson

ink&paper from Ben Proudfoot on Vimeo.

Commerce, Historical, Nostalgia, Social Role, Technology Paper and Press — How Vanishing Technologies Become More Precious, Scholarly Kitchen, December 30, 2011

I believe I’ll buy some paper there in January.

Posted in Los Angeles | Leave a comment

Diptych 1

Posted on December 28, 2011 by Ginger Mayerson

Diptych 1
12″w x 9″h

Posted in diptychs | Leave a comment

If they won’t go away, they should at least cough up some dough

Posted on December 23, 2011 by Ginger Mayerson

Geeze, either or, folks, either or.

Tell Kim Kardashian (and the rest of them [GM]) to endorse the millionaires tax (or go away [GM])

Oh, and then there’s the question of paying decent taxes on ill-gotten gains and possibly doing some good in the world:

Kardashian Products Made In Sweatshops With Child Labor, Radar Online, December 21, 2011

And just in time for Christmas! K’mon Kardashians, be good people. Endorse the Millionaires’ Tax, stop making stuff in sweatshops, and fund a local charity like the Union Mission or some food banks, they always need money because not everyone is as fortunate and photogenic as you all are (more or less from the front). Oh! Why do I waste my breath?

Posted in amused, California, economics, politics | Leave a comment

Diptych and Postcard 06-10-11 video

Posted on December 21, 2011 by Ginger Mayerson

No longer content to merely post jpgs, I must now show you how I put these things together. At least there’s no sound (what a blessing). Enjoy!

Posted in collage, diptychs, postcards, video | Leave a comment

Names to remember from the Bush junta’s war in Iraq

Posted on December 20, 2011 by Ginger Mayerson

Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condolezza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and Douglas Feith are responsible for a war based on lies, fought on borrowed money, fueled by greed, racism, sadism, and madness. Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condolezza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and Douglas Feith are responsible for all the death, destruction, horror, and utter pointless waste of that war.

I would add George W. Bush to the list of responsible parties. He was president, legally or illegally elected, for all of it.

I would also add everyone who voted for Bush in 2004. If you didn’t know he and his gang were evil then your stupid. If you did know, then you’re evil, too. I would like to say things have improved, but they haven’t. The door to a police state the bush junta opened is still open, and the Obama administration isn’t doing enough to close it. It will also take generations to undo the destabilization in the Middle East. Oh, and not to mention leaving a monster deficit for nothing or worse than nothing. For people who profess family values, they sure left a helluva mess for their children to clean up.

On a related note, I’ll be publishing the Darkness at Sunset and Vine trilogy in 2012. I started writing the first part on September 7, 2003. Anybody remember September 7, 2003? Here’s my draft afterward:

Yes, I was very angry the week I wrote “The Way we Live Now at Sunset and Vine.” I wrote it in five days starting on September 7, 2003 when our unduly elected President Bush lied to us again:

“Our strategy in Iraq will require new resources. We have conducted a thorough assessment of our military and reconstruction needs in Iraq, and also in Afghanistan. I will soon submit to Congress a request for $87 billion. The request will cover ongoing military and intelligence operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, which we expect will cost $66 billion over the next year. This budget request will also support our commitment to helping the Iraqi and Afghan people rebuild their own nations, after decades of oppression and mismanagement. We will provide funds to help them improve security. And we will help them to restore basic services, such as electricity and water, and to build new schools, roads, and medical clinics. This effort is essential to the stability of those nations, and therefore, to our own security. Now and in the future, we will support our troops and we will keep our word to the more than 50 million people of Afghanistan and Iraq.”
Continue reading →

Posted in politics, war | Leave a comment

Shameless self-promotion: the Dr. Hackenbush books

Posted on December 20, 2011 by Ginger Mayerson

Long ago, in 2003, when I started this blog, it was to promote the Dr. Hackenbush and her Orchestra novels. Many things have happened since then and here are two of them:

21 pages

21 pages

Yes, this shocks me, too. So, here are the first 21 pages of each book. There’s more serializations and annotations and other amusements at www.Hackenbush.net if you have nothing better to do. Enjoy!

Posted in Serialization, wapshott | Leave a comment

America puts on skis to step on a slippery slope

Posted on December 19, 2011 by Ginger Mayerson

“Armed with a search warrant, Nelson County Sheriff Kelly Janke went looking for six missing cows on the Brossart family farm in the early evening of June 23. Three men brandishing rifles chased him off, he said.

“Janke knew the gunmen could be anywhere on the 3,000-acre spread in eastern North Dakota. Fearful of an armed standoff, he called in reinforcements from the state Highway Patrol, a regional SWAT team, a bomb squad, ambulances and deputy sheriffs from three other counties.

“He also called in a Predator B drone.

“As the unmanned aircraft circled 2 miles overhead the next morning, sophisticated sensors under the nose helped pinpoint the three suspects and showed they were unarmed. Police rushed in and made the first known arrests of U.S. citizens with help from a Predator, the spy drone that has helped revolutionize modern warfare.

“But that was just the start. Local police say they have used two unarmed Predators based at Grand Forks Air Force Base to fly at least two dozen surveillance flights since June. The FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration have used Predators for other domestic investigations, officials said.”
Police employ Predator drone spy planes on home front, by Brian Bennett, LA Times, December 10, 2011

Militarizing, or further militarizing, the civilian police is just not a good idea. If the civilian police are at war then whom else are they at war with but the civilians and citizens they’re sworn to protect? We have too much of this problem in Los Angeles unfortunately (see Mike Davis, “City of Quartz” and Steve Herbert “Policing Space”). I might be okay with this if I thought it was only going to be used for dire situations like this one in No Dak. But give police a predator drone and everything becomes a dire situation and that’s happening already if Local police say they have used two unarmed Predators based at Grand Forks Air Force Base to fly at least two dozen surveillance flights since June. Surveillance flights in North Dakota? What the hell do they need to fly surveillance flights on in North Dakota? And on whom?

This makes me wonder how long before the police start using them in Los Angeles and other urban areas, if they aren’t already? How long before they start killing people with them? Could we please elect some people to protect us from a police state? And could the guy we thought we elected to protect us from a police state start protecting us from a police state? Yes, of course I mean Barack Obama.

Posted in horrfied, war | Leave a comment

At least Bach is still in the public domain

Posted on December 18, 2011 by Ginger Mayerson

Baroque.me: J.S. Bach – Cello Suite No. 1 – Prelude from Alexander Chen on Vimeo.

Posted in video | Leave a comment

Ding Dong the Hitch is dead

Posted on December 16, 2011 by Ginger Mayerson

And good riddance. I stopped reading the Nation years ago because he was in it. Here’s the run-down by David E, who has a stronger stomach for these things than I do.

Ah, Hitchens, it was so tempting to agree with you, but then I always remembered you were just a racist, elitist, war mongering, drunken bastard.

Posted in politics | 1 Comment

Who did we elect to save us from what?

Posted on December 16, 2011 by Ginger Mayerson

“WASHINGTON — The White House on Wednesday abandoned its threat to veto a defense bill that sets in stone the commander in chief’s authority to indefinitely detain terrorism suspects, including Americans, in military custody.”
Hommage à Peter Watkins, Fablog, December 15, 2011

There can be no sane reason for this to be true and the existing law must be changed as well.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Get your censor on

Posted on December 15, 2011 by Ginger Mayerson

Get Your War On gets back in the saddle for SOPA and PIPA crazy internet censorship bills.

Get Your Censor On and what you can do about it.

Posted in politics | 1 Comment

AAC Tour Postcard 2010

Posted on December 14, 2011 by Ginger Mayerson

6″w x 4″h

I made this postcard on the Arroyo Arts Collective Tour on November 21, 2010

Posted in collage, postcards | Leave a comment

LOL Orthography

Posted on December 11, 2011 by Ginger Mayerson

I can has language play: Construction of Language and Identity in LOLspeak from Lauren Gawne on Vimeo.

(via of all places)

Linguists. Economists. Kitty creole. Hey, why not?

Posted in amused | Leave a comment

US Davis is never going to live this down

Posted on December 10, 2011 by Ginger Mayerson

Nor should they.

(bow down to this photographer, Louise Macabitas, who doesn’t have a site I can link to)

“Hundreds of students and faculty members at UC Davis gathered Monday in the campus quad to protest the use of pepper spray on students by university police last week.

“The police on Friday sprayed a group of students who were sitting down in a peaceful protest as part of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Eleven students were treated for the effects of pepper spray, including two who were treated at a hospital.

“Since then, two campus police officers and UC Davis Police Chief Annette Spicuzza have been placed on leave. UC officials are investigating the incident.”
Hundreds of UC Davis students protest pepper-spraying by police, LA Times Blog, November 21, 2011

Also:

UC Davis Pepper Spray Video: Chancellor Launches Probe as Faculty Members Seek Her Ouster [An Open Letter], International Business Times, November 20, 2011

Give a cop pepper spray and everything becomes a protester, alas. Good thing those UC Davis security guards didn’t have tasers.

Note: Here’s the remarkably cynical set up for that cartoon. Never mind the text, the jack-booted pepper spray thug image in today’s comic says it all.

Posted in horrfied, politics | Leave a comment